


suffer the misery of devils

by canonjohnlock



Series: the summer soldier & the sunshine patriot [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes vs. The Winter Soldier, Captain America Sam Wilson, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Kidnapping, Mentions of Sam/Riley, Mission Fic, POV Multiple, POV Peter Parker, POV Sam Wilson, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie), Rescue Missions, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2020-03-05 11:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canonjohnlock/pseuds/canonjohnlock
Summary: When Zemo's notebook is stolen from Shuri's lab in Wakanda, Sam, Peter, and Shuri team up to track down a now missing Bucky and figure out what the captor wants from him.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone gets angry, this fic isn't highlighting the "damage" the Russo brothers say Bucky has. If anything, this fic is going to prove that anyone can be a hero and that just because a person has mental health problems doesn't mean they aren't capable of being good. Not once in this fic will Bucky Barnes be painted as dangerous. Bucky is not dangerous. The Winter Soldier, however, can be. Whether the Winter Soldier makes an appearance in this fic or not, you'll have to read to find out. 
> 
> There will most likely be no regular posting from me for this fic. It will be multi-chaptered, but I cannot tell you how many chapters. I'm posting as I write, so I might go back and changes things in earlier chapters as I learn more about where the plot is taking me. This is partially beta-ed by my good friend, neverwherever. 
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are much appreciated. Thank you all so much for reading!

Sam stares at the checkerboard, wondering if Steve made that move on purpose. He frowns, and jumps two of his pieces warily. He collects the black pieces and adds them to his pile on his side of the table, then he watches helplessly as Steve jumps one of his and crowns his piece. “Son of a bitch,” Sam mutters. 

Steve chuckles quietly under his breath, but then turns serious. “How’s Buck?”

Sam plays with the stolen pieces next to him, clicking them together. “He’s… alright. Is he still not talking to you?”

“He’ll call when he knows I’m not home and leave a voicemail. They’re always short. He mostly updates me on Stephanie.”

He nods. “He loves that cat.”

Steve smiles. “He used to feed the alleycats back in Brooklyn. Our landlord hated it because it just brought more cats. I hated it, too, because food wasn’t cheap and there he was tossing bits of it to stray cats.”

“You just need to give him time, Steve. He feels abandoned.” Bucky is still angry at Steve, and so is Sam. Steve  _ left _ them. He left them to deal with Tony and Natasha’s deaths, with putting themselves back together from the scraps that were left. But Sam found out a long time ago that being angry at something he can't change will get him nowhere, so he goes to see Steve every now and then. He can’t say Bucky does the same.

“I haven’t seen him since he last came by the house a month ago.”

“He’s alright, Steve. He’s adjusting to the world around him and he actually goes to see a counselor at the VA here and there. He’ll be alright. You’ve had eighty odd years to heal; he’s only had a few months.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Sam smirks. “I’m always right.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “How’s being Captain America?”

He hesitates. “It’s different,” he finally settles on. “Weird.”

“That’s how I felt at first, too,” Steve admits. “Coming out of that machine suddenly feeling healthy. There’s an adjustment period.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “An adjustment period.” He moves another one of his pieces on the board.

“You are doing alright, right? I realized I never asked if you wanted to take up the shield.”

Sam chews the inside of his cheek. “It’s okay. Like I said, it’s different.”

Steve doesn’t press the issue beyond that, and Sam leaves shortly after, glad that Steve didn’t prod for more information because the truth is, being Captain America feels wrong.

The mantra of  _ not right not right not right _ repeats over and over again in his head, despite his best efforts to silence it. He shouldn’t be Captain America. He’ll never be as good as Steve, can never live up to the legend.  _ Not right not right not right _ . The shield feels wrong in his hands. The blue and white added to his uniform makes him feel like he’s playing dress up when before stepping into his suit felt like coming home. The guns he keeps holstered to each thigh are a comfort, but it makes him feel like a coward. Steve never needed guns, could rely on his shield and instincts to get him through.

Sam goes running at night, out to the edge of the woods which had been pushed back following the battle. He stands at the edge, looking at fallen and burnt trees, and screams. It’s the only way to get the mantra to stop, to quiet his mind and give him peace, for however long he can scream. It never feels like long enough, because no matter what,  _ not right not right not right _ echoes in his brain, bouncing around like popcorn kernels.

The compound had been swiftly rebuilt after the final battle and Sam was quick to move back in, to slot himself back into place like nothing had changed. But he hasn’t lived at the compound since before Germany and the Raft, and nothing is the same no matter how hard he tries. The halls echo when he walks, and Vision isn’t there phasing through walls and invading his privacy. Bruce moves in, followed by Maria Hill and Nick Fury, and together they form a little broken family.

Sam aches for the simplicity of the past. Hunting Bucky for Steve after the Triskelion and the fall of SHIELD, training with Wanda and Vision, having Steve’s back. It had all been so simple, and now everything is upside down and crooked. Steve is old, left the life he had here and went to live it with Peggy; Bucky dropped out of the fight a few months ago; and Spiderman is Sam’s unlikely partner in crime.

It’s two in the morning and Sam is screaming. It echoes back to him, fading with each reverberation. He can feel his heartbeat against his chest, in his fingertips. He’s alive. That’s real and  _ right _ . Nothing can take that from him. He’s alive, so he keeps moving, no matter how much he doesn’t want to.

…

Sam is eating Cheerios and doing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper when his phone starts ringing. He swears under his breath. Just once he wants a quiet Sunday morning. He slides his thumb across the screen and holds the phone between his shoulder and ear. “‘Lo?”

“Captain Wilson!” Peter Parker screams into the phone.

“Peter Parker!” Sam yells back. “There a reason you’re distracting me from my crossword puzzle?”

“Captain, it’s Bucky. He’s-” There’s shuffling on the other end of the phone, and then Peter is back, talking urgently. “He’s not at his apartment!”

“Bucky has a life outside his apartment, you know. He goes to school. He even told me he might start looking for a job.” Sam frowns at the crossword and pencils a word in. It fits and he smiles to himself.

“No, Captain! His apartment is trashed. Marcus’ fishbowl is knocked over and Stephanie is missing.”

“What?” Sam drops his pencil and stands up, chair scraping on the tile.

“I came by because he wanted help with an essay and he couldn’t figure out how to open Word. His door was open so I went inside and I found it like this.”

Sam is already grabbing his keys and heading to his car. “Stay there. You got your suit?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s in my bag.”

“Put it on in case whoever was there comes back. Whoever took Bucky has to be strong. Bucky isn’t easy to overpower.” Sam slams his foot on the accelerator and fishtails out of the garage. He spares a look in his backseat to make sure Steve’s-  _ his _ \- shield is back there. The drive to Brooklyn feels like it takes ages, but it’s maybe only forty-five minutes. Sam parks haphazardly outside Bucky’s building, tickets be damned. He takes the stairs two at a time, shield held in front of him.

Bucky’s door frame is shattered and there’s a boot-sized hole in the door. He nudges the door open and sticks his head inside. A web hits his hand and sticks him to the wall next to the door. “Peter!”

“Oh, sorry!” he says, launching himself over Bucky’s overturned couch. “I thought you were the bad guy.” He grabs a knife from Bucky’s kitchen and cuts Sam’s hand out. “No one’s come by.”

Sam shakes the remaining webs off his hand and slots the shield onto his back. Marcus’ fishbowl has been righted and refilled with water, and the goldfish is swimming around like nothing happened. Bucky’s TV has been knocked off its stand and a picture frame shattered. There’s stuffing from the couch everywhere. “Looks like Bucky didn’t make it easy.” Sam moves some couch stuffing from in front of him and something catches the light. He bends down and picks up a heavy duty syringe with metal casing. There’s a little bit of a blue liquid left in there. “Kid, web up the needle on this so it can’t poke us. We’ll take it Bruce and see what was in here.” He passes the syringe to Peter and ventures further into the apartment. The hallway leading to the bathroom and bedroom is unharmed. The fight had stayed in the living room then.

When Sam walks back into the living room, Peter is crouched on the ground, head in his hands. “Hey, you alright?”

“It’s my fault,” he mumbles. “I should have gotten here sooner.”

“Hey, no. Come on. How could you have known?” Sam asks, squatting beside Peter and placing a hesitant hand on his back. “This is no one’s fault except whoever took him.”

Peter sniffles and nods. “Right. We just need to find whoever took him.”

“Exactly. Can your AI scan the place and see if we missed anything?” Sam looks around the apartment, hoping something else will jump out at him.

“Karen.”

“On it, Mr. Parker,” Sam hears faintly from inside Peter’s suit. A blue glow emits from Peter’s eyes on his mask and scans the room from ceiling to floor. “There’s a cat in the kitchen cabinet.”

“Stephanie!” Peter gasps and tears into the kitchen, yanking open drawers and cabinets. He emerges holding the trembling white cat. “Hey, girl. It’s alright.” She snuggles closer to him and purrs. Sam stares at the cat, wishing she could talk and tell them who took Bucky so Sam could rip him apart.

“Let’s go,” Sam says, teeth grinding. “You got the syringe?”

Peter hands him the webbed up syringe and follows him out the door. “Wait!” He runs back inside and comes back with Marcus’ fishbowl.

“Really?”

“Well, I’m taking Stephanie so I can’t leave Marcus! Someone needs to feed him!”

“Don’t you dare spill that fish in my car.”

…

Peter spills the fish in the car so Sam has to stop at a PetSmart to get more distilled water. He calls ahead to Bruce and tells him what happened and that he needs someone to analyze the liquid in the syringe. “I’ll start prepping,” Bruce says. “And I’ll tell Fury and Maria to see if there’s any HYDRA operatives out there who might want Bucky.”

“HYDRA’s still out there?” Peter asks, a death grip on Marcus’ bowl. Stephanie is curled up in the shield in the backseat, purring.

“Not that we know of, but they’ve always been tricky bastards.”

“Why would they want him?”

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. Bucky used to be a deadly weapon, but Shuri cleared the brainwashing, so he can’t be abused anymore. I guess HYDRA doesn’t know that and they’re in for a rude awakening.”

Peter nods. “Right. So everything will be okay as long as it’s not HYDRA.”

“Everything will  _ not _ be okay no matter who took him. I’m gonna pull the bowels out of whoever took him. Bucky deserves a break more than anyone I know.” His grip tightens on the steering wheel and he speeds up on the highway.

“Captain,” Peter says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“We’re gonna find him. He’s gonna be alright.” Peter places his hand on Sam’s arm and squeezes gently.

Sam eases up on the gas, realizing he was pushing 120. “I know. I just- I feel for him.”

Peter looks out the window, thumb rubbing gently up and down the fishbowl like he’s petting it. “Me, too.”

…

Bruce emerges from the lab and wipes his brow. “It’s a strong sedative. It could kill a normal guy, but it’ll probably only knock Bucky out for twelve, maybe sixteen hours.”

Sam rubs at his face. “Is there any way to find out who took him based on the sedative?”

“Honestly, the stuff it’s made of is garden variety chemicals you could find in a high school chem lab. Everything has just been super concentrated. It doesn’t look like the sedatives HYDRA used on him. At this point, it could be anyone.”

“Great,” Sam groans. “Thanks, Bruce.”

“Anytime.”

Sam walks back to the kitchen where Peter is on the ground playing with Stephanie. “Sedative.”

“Still no leads?”

“None.”

“Mr. Fury and Agent Hill are still trying to see if there’re any HYDRA operatives out there, but so far they’re coming up empty.”

“At least it’s most likely not HYDRA then.” Sam sits down heavily in the kitchen chair. His bowl of Cheerios from that morning is still on the table right next to Marcus’ fishbowl.  

HOMER, the AI installed in the new compound, comes to life, alerting Peter and Sam to his presence with a soft ding. “Captain Wilson, Mr. Parker.”

Sam looks up at the ceiling out of habit even though he knows the AI is everywhere. He just needs a place to look at and talk to. “Yeah, HOMER?”

“Princess Shuri requests to speak with you.”

“Can it wait?” Sam asks.

“You’re turning down a princess?” Peter asks incredulously, ignoring Stephanie who’s chewing on his thumb.

“She says it’s urgent, sir.”

Sam closes his eyes. “Fine, patch her through.”

A purple hologram comes to life in front of Sam and then Shuri is standing the kitchen, as real as if she were actually there. “Captain Wilson!” she says.

“Princess, now really isn’t-”

“Is Bucky okay?” she interrupts.

“What? How’d you know?”

“Know what?”

“He’s been kidnapped,” Sam says slowly.

“Shit!”

“What? What’s wrong?” Peter asks, scrambling to his feet to stand next to Sam. Stephanie clings to him and crawls up his shirt to sit on his shoulder.

“You remember Zemo?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, sparing a quick glance at Peter. “We remember.”

“Well, T’Challa took his notebook, the one with Bucky’s activation code and instructions on how to handle the Winter Soldier. I kept it in my lab, hoping it could give me some clues on how to clear Bucky’s brainwashing.”

“Are you saying-”

“I couldn’t find a way to clear it without turning Bucky into a vegetable. The only way I could clear the brainwashing was to wipe his entire brain, meaning he wouldn’t be able to walk or talk or even eat.”

“So, the conditioning is still dormant,” Sam says. He feels cold suddenly, like a bucket of cold water was just dumped over his head.  

“Not necessarily. It may still be there, it may not. We never wanted to test it. We figured as long as no one had the notebook, no one could use him. I was going to burn it, but I never did because I was hoping I might find something in there on how to cure him for sure. And now someone’s stolen it!”

“And Bucky’s gone.”

“This really isn’t good,” Peter mutters.

“We need to find Bucky and quick. Shuri, do you know who took the notebook?” he presses.

“We’ve been combing through our security footage but they managed to keep their face hidden. It’s no one from Wakanda, though. Since opening our borders, I’ve been demonstrating our medical tech to ambassadors and doctors from other nations. We’re going through the visitor logs to see if anyone has any connection to HYDRA or something nefarious, but we’re coming up empty.”

“We don’t think it’s anyone HYDRA related. We managed to wipe out a lot of the operatives and the sedative they used wasn’t a HYDRA concoction. Once we find out who took the notebook, we can find Bucky.”

“What was the sedative made of?” Shuri asks, pulling up a hologram of her own with her Kimoyo beads. 

“Bruce said it was just stuff you could find in a high school lab, but super concentrated.”

Shuri scrolls through ID’s on her hologram and stops. “We had a visitor from a lab at MIT. He’s working in bio engineering, creating prosthetics for people who lost limbs, like Bucky. He looks capable.” She flicks her hand and the file on the guy appears in front of Sam on his own hologram. He grabs a tablet from the kitchen table.

“HOMER, transfer that file to this tablet, please,” he says and the tablet dings when the file is downloaded. Sam scrolls through with Peter peering over his shoulder.

Montgomery Stonewall is an ex-Navy SEAL who was honorably discharged after six years in the service. He went to school at MIT after and continued research there. His record is clean, with no possible ties to anything or anyone that would want to harm Bucky.

“What could this guy want with Bucky?” Peter asks, saying the exact thing Sam was thinking. 

“I don’t know, but he matches the height and build of the guy on the cams,” Shuri says. “Listen, I’m flying out there tonight to help you guys.”

“Shuri-”

“No,” she interrupts. “I know Zemo’s notebook inside and out, so if Bucky has been compromised, I know how to handle him. And I can help you guys find Stonewall and see if he’s our guy. This is partially my fault.”

“Shuri, no,” Sam says. “It’s no one’s fault.”

“Yeah, how could you have known someone would want to steal it so many years after anyway?” Peter chimes in. “We’re gonna find Bucky and he’s gonna be alright.”

Shuri smiles. “Yeah, everything will be fine.”

The hologram closes and Sam sighs heavily. They all keep saying everything will be fine, but if the Winter Soldier is activated, Sam doesn’t know if he could fight him. Not just because it’s Bucky in there, but because he’s so powerful. Going up against him the two times he did was more than enough for Sam and he hopes for Bucky’s sake that the conditioning being dormant for so long will make it less effective. He wants to beat his head against the table, but instead he stands up and looks at Peter. “Okay, let’s see what else we can dig up on Stonewall.”


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter mourns for those he's lost and he, Sam, and Shuri begin to look for Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to update. Inspiration wasn't striking and I started a new job. I can't say whether the third chapter will be up quicker than this one was, so god speed my friends.

Peter stays inside while Sam goes out to greet Shuri. He’s hunched over at the kitchen table, watching Marcus swim in circles in his bowl. Around and around and around. Peter feels like that, too, like he’s just going in circles. First there were his parents, and though he can’t remember his parents very well, he still feels a hole where they could have been. Then there was Uncle Ben and that hurt more. It felt like a betrayal to his parents, to miss a man who wasn’t even his dad more than he missed his actual father. And then- and then Mr. Stark, Tony. And Peter had stood there and watched the light die in his eyes and he couldn’t do  _ anything _ . He couldn’t stop it from happening. He was helpless in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. Tony would still be here if- Peter stops, takes a deep breath in, out. And finally Bucky. Bucky is like a brother to Peter, now. And he’s gone too, missing, possibly being tortured, and Peter feels helpless all over again. 

Marcus swims in his fishbowl and Peter drowns in his head. 

Sam and Shuri walk into the kitchen, talking to each other, and Peter stays in his seat. He has school tomorrow and a lab report he hasn’t started due Wednesday. He was going to patrol the streets tonight, maybe go see Pepper and Morgan. Instead, he sits at the kitchen table in a compound that’s not right and worries about a guy he fought seven years ago even though it feels like two to him. In another life, he’s twenty-two, graduated from college and maybe going to grad school. In another life, Tony is still alive, catching him up on the last five years and explaining how the mobius strip worked for time travel. In another life, Peter is dead, killed by Whiplash’s drones at the Stark Expo. The pain of it all courses through him like fire, burning up his nerves and making him want to  _ scream _ . 

“Mr. Parker’s heart rate is reading dangerously high,” HOMER says and he’s not FRIDAY and it doesn’t sound right and-

“Peter?” Sam says, “Are you alright?”

He stands up so quickly the chair topples over and the resulting crash sends Stephanie careening out of the room. He’s trapped under the debris, Vulture closing in on him. He’s stuck on Titan, dissolving in Tony’s arm. He’s in an orange haze he can just barely remember. He can’t breathe, he can’t think. The room is too small, too hot. Fire is licking at his heels. He needs to scream, needs to cry and thrash and suffer. He shouldn’t be here. He  _ shouldn’t _ be here. 

He sprints out of the room, ignoring Shuri and Sam calling after him. He races down the echoing hallways, feet pounding on the ground. He takes a corner too sharply and his shoulder hits the wall. He stumbles, but regains his balance and keeps running. He can’t breathe and everything is closing in. 

He ends up outside, gulping in lungfuls of fresh air. The birds chirp in the trees. The water ripples under the breeze. His heart rate slows down and he can breathe again. Bucky is good at calming him down. He doesn’t ask a lot of questions, doesn’t make him talk or do anything. He just sits with Peter through it all, a calm and sturdy force at his side. Sometimes Peter talks, and when he does, Bucky listens. He doesn’t interrupt or offer advice on how to deal with it. He just sits and listens and he distracts Peter. He lets Peter look at his arm and talk about the Wakandan technology. He lets Peter talk his ear off about the composition of his web fluid and how he found the perfect formula. He even listens when Peter talks about the LEGO Death Star he built with Ned. Peter looks up at the sky, deceptively clear despite the storm raging in his head. 

He will find Bucky. He will get Bucky back. He couldn’t do anything about his parents, or Uncle Ben, or even Tony, but he can do something about Bucky. He can get his friend back. 

…

If they had met under different circumstances and not after a long battle and funeral, Peter knows he and Shuri could have been great friends. As it stands, he associates Shuri with pain and loss. Still, he listens to her as she speaks with them about what happened to Bucky in Wakanda. She’s smart as a whip and knows it, too. She reminds him of Tony, explaining concepts and ideas with a quick tongue, but also welcoming to questions. It hurts, it always will. 

“We kept Bucky in cryo for about two weeks while my team and I tried to figure out a way to wipe the brainwashing without wiping the rest of him,” she explains. They’re sat around the kitchen table again. Marcus sits in the center, still swimming in circles, and Stephanie purrs on Peter’s lap. Sam sits at the head of the table, hands folded in his lap. His shield leans against the wall nearby. Mr. Fury and Agent Hill stand behind Sam, imposing and making Peter nervous. Bruce sits across from Peter, listening as intently as him. “Like I told Sam and Peter earlier, we couldn’t find a way to cure him without wiping his entire brain. Not only would he never recover his memories that way, he wouldn’t be able to walk or talk, or even breathe on his own. Effectively, he’d be a vegetable.” 

Shuri pulls up a hologram of a brain on her Kimoyo beads, hand held open like she’s holding the brain. “This is a scan of Bucky’s brain from just before we placed him in cryo. The darker areas are the areas that were damaged during the wipes HYDRA did.” She rotates the diagram, pointing out the numerous dark spots. “They mostly targeted his frontal and temporal lobes. Those parts of the brain are mainly responsible for personality, behavior, and memory. The brainwashing, however, can’t be pinned down to one location in the brain. The unconscious mind lives everywhere and possibly nowhere. That’s why the only solution we could find was to wipe his entire brain. Obviously, we didn’t do that.”

“So the Winter Soldier could be activated again, is what you’re saying,” Fury says, voice even. Peter can’t quite get a read on the guy or what he thinks of the whole situation and it makes his skin prickle. He shifts in his seat, tense.  

“Actually,” Shuri says, and Peter feels a little spark of hope. “We took Bucky out of cryo to discuss his options with him. We did a full examination on him and found something interesting.” She pulls up another diagram of the brain, this one with smaller dark spots. “This is a scan of Bucky’s brain after we took him out of cryo. As you can see, the damaged parts of his brain have started to heal. I believe that because he has a version of the super soldier serum, his healing factor is sped up, and after so much time in between wipes from HYDRA, he’s been able to start a healing process. The longer he stayed out of cryo, the faster he healed. This is a brain scan taken about a week before… Thanos.” The latest brain scan shows very small dark spots, hardly discernible from the rest of his brain. She closes down the diagram after a moment. “The only issue is, aside from using the activation words, there’s no way of knowing if he’s healed enough to resist falling victim to those code words. We didn’t want to subject him to that, obviously.” 

“So, Zemo’s notebook could be absolutely worthless,” Agent Hill says. 

“Or capable of activating the world’s deadliest assassin,” Fury adds. Peter squeezes his hand into a fist. Bucky isn’t an assassin, or he is, or the Winter Soldier is and Bucky is the Winter Soldier except he isn’t and- His mind spins, tilting this way and that and Peter feels sick. Bucky is  _ Bucky _ . He’s not a deadly assassin. He didn’t even know what Hulu was until a month ago. He digs his nails deeper into his palm. 

“Bucky’s strong,” Sam says, eyes glued on Marcus. “He’ll make it. As for whoever took him…” He trails off. “Maria, what’d you find on Stonewall?”

“He’s an ex-Navy SEAL who went to MIT after being discharged. He’s the oldest child of Kathryn and Patrick Stonewall and he has a younger sister named Olivia. He grew up in Plum Tree, Indiana just south of Fort Wayne. He graduated at the top of class from MIT with a degree in biological engineering and now he works with a research team there helping to develop robotic prosthetics. His record is squeaky clean. Not a single arrest and he was a perfect soldier in the military, too,” Maria finishes. 

“There’s no way this guy wants anything to do with Bucky,” Bruce says. “What could a guy like Stonewall want with the Winter Soldier?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want anything to do with Bucky,” Peter says. Everyone turns to look at him. His voice is hoarse, like he’s been screaming for days on end. He clears it, but it still comes out thick and scratchy, sounding like the static you get when an AUX cord isn’t plugged in all the way. “Maybe he’s just the delivery guy. Get the book and get Bucky and deliver them to whoever wants them.”

“Yeah, maybe he’s getting paid off, or blackmailed,” Shuri agrees. 

“Only one way to find out: let’s go to his house and have him tell us what he knows,” Sam says. 

“I’m sure we can call first instead of breaking down his door,” Bruce suggests. 

“We don’t have time for that,” Sam explains. “And if he isn’t just the delivery boy, we’d be giving him a heads up. We need to go to his house. Maria, tell me you have an address.”

“He has a house in Massachusetts near campus. Secluded, too.”

Sam claps his hands together. “Shuri, let’s go. Bruce, Maria, Fury, hold down the fort here. Peter, go home. Get some sleep. You have school-”

“If you think I’m gonna stand by and not do anything to help find Bucky, you’re wrong,” Peter snaps. “He’s my friend, too, and I’m gonna help.” 

Sam opens his mouth to argue, but he must see the resolve in Peter’s face, in the set of his jaw, and he holds his hands up. “Alright, but you’re telling your aunt. She kind of scares me.”

…

The Royal Talon Flyer glides smoothly through the air. Peter is already in his suit, pacing as they make their way to Massachusetts. He watches as the necklace around Shuri’s neck appears to start eating her, covering her in a suit similar to the one Peter saw T’Challa wearing. It’s a deep purple color with silver inlays. It looks thin and breathable and Peter wonders how it can stand up against a bullet. He knows Shuri is good with tech, though, and if it’s anything like her brother’s suit, she’s probably the safest of the three of them. She pulls on the gauntlets she wore in the battle. Her hands look like they’re crawling out of a panther’s throat. 

Sam looks like he’s stalling pulling on his suit. He waits until they’re ten minutes away before he starts getting dressed. He pulls on his old armor, colored red, white, and blue now, but in muted tones to help with camouflage. He keeps two guns holstered to each thigh and his wings strapped to his back. Over his wings he slots the shield into place. He looks powerful, but also uncomfortable. Peter knows a thing or two about not feeling like you deserve what you have. 

“Okay, we’ll drop down about a half mile from his house and walk from there. I’ll take point. Peter, Shuri, you need to have my six as well as each other’s. This guy used to be a Navy SEAL. He’s not someone to underestimate,” Sam tells them. “Don’t engage unless absolutely necessary.”

The plane lowers over an opening in the woods behind the house. The three of them jump out, Peter landing nimbly on his toes. Peter stands slightly behind Shuri, listening intently to the sound of the woods around them. It’s early morning and the birds are just waking up and chirping. At any other time it would be peaceful, but Peter feels more on edge. 

They come up on the house quickly, not encountering anything in the woods behind it. They crouch behind a fallen tree. Peter peeks out above the trunk and looks at the house. It’s a two-storey log cabin with green shutters. It’s all very picturesque. “Karen,” he says, “scan for signs of life.” He watches the scan of the house, looking for anything that could pop up on the thermal scan. “Nothing,” he tells Sam and Shuri. “It’s empty.” 

“Maybe he’s at the lab?” Shuri suggests.

“No,” Sam says. “Not this early.” He pushes himself over the tree, motioning for them to follow.

“Well, if he’s not here, where is he?” Peter asks. 

Sam shrugs. “Shuri, you and me will go in through the back door here. Peter, can you get up to the second floor window there?”

Peter shoots webs up and pulls himself up, sticking to the wall beside the window. He tries the window and finds it unlocked. He pushes it open and slides inside, closing it behind him, and finds himself in a cluttered office. There’s a bookshelf along one wall, filled with random books, trinkets, and papers that Stonewall apparently hadn’t bothered to file. Peter removes his mask and starts digging through the papers on the bookshelf, but they’re all either bills or graded essays from his time as a student. He starts browsing the trinkets and finds a Purple Heart in a wooden box. He stares at it. Nowhere in Stonewall’s file did it say he was injured in the line of duty. 

The box is dusty, like he had received it and tossed it aside. Peter lifts the medal out of the box and turns it around, looking for some form of identification. There’s nothing. He frowns and puts it back in the box. “Karen, was Montgomery Stonewall ever injured in action?” he asks, thinking maybe he could have missed that detail when reading the reports. 

“No, Peter.” 

“Huh. Did he know anybody who was?” He walks over to the computer desk and sits down in the rolling chair. It squeaks under him. 

“Many men in his unit were injured, and he knew many men who received Purple Hearts.” 

“Do any names stick out more than the rest?” He jerks the computer mouse from side to side and the screen lights up. The background is Stonewall and another man with short hair and a scar running down the side of his face. They’re standing in front of Mount Rushmore, arms around each other like they’re brothers. Peter looks closer and just where the picture cuts off, right above the knee, he can see the top of metal leg prosthetics. 

“One name seems to come up more often than others,” Karen says as Peter sticks a flashdrive in one of the USB ports. He opens an unmarked folder on Stonewall’s desktop and finds it encrypted. He frowns, but gets to work. 

“What’s the name?” he says, fingers flying over the keyboard. 

“Jeffery Oliver.” She puts his picture up in the corner of Peter’s mask. 

“Matches the guy on the desktop.”

“Oliver received a Purple Heart. He lost his legs in Iraq.”

“Definitely the guy in the photo then. Where is he now?” He squints at the computer and then presses enter on the keyboard. He either decrypted the file or deleted it all. 

“He’s dead.”

“Wait, what?” The file opens and he lets out a deep breath. He starts the download and browses through the rest of the files. Nothing sticks out quite like the unmarked folder, but he does a full download anyway. Maybe Bruce or Maria could find something he overlooked. “How’d he die?”

“Suicide.”

Peter doesn’t say anything, but he does stand up from the computer and go to look around outside the office. He finds the master bedroom and pushes the door open. It’s a mess; clothes strewn everywhere, a chair knocked over, a hole in the drywall. He examines the hole in the wall and finds a streak of teal blue, like someone had rubbed paint off onto the wall. The closer he looks, the more he thinks the color matches the nail polish he used to paint the nails on Bucky’s metal arm when he was bored a few nights ago. He presses his finger to his ear. “Cap, Shuri, Bucky was here.” He ventures into the bathroom and finds the medicine cabinet door ripped off the hinges, pill bottles and first aid components tossed on the ground. There’s blood spatter on the bathroom mirror, streaks of red staining the sink, and some molars surrounding the drain. 

There’s a crackle in his ear as the comm comes to life and then Shuri says, “We know. You might want to come down to the basement, Peter.” 

He swings by the office again, grabbing the flash drive and on a whim, the Purple Heart. He takes the stairs to the main floor, wincing when they creak. The door to the basement is slightly ajar, but Peter can feel the frigid air through the small crack. He shivers but goes downstairs. He finds Shuri and Sam standing in front of what looks like a distorted dentist’s chair, but he’s read the files. He knows. And when he feels the bile creeping up his throat, he does nothing to swallow it down; instead he vomits all over the cracked concrete floor.


	3. iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt for Bucky continues, and Sam confronts Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for updating so slowly. Life gets in the way a lot and I haven't been writing as much as I would like to. I hope this chapter is good and that y'all enjoy it as much as I have been enjoying writing it. Thank you for reading!

Sam has seen some shit in his days. He’s seen guys missing half their bodies, blood pooling in the sand. He’s seen people come back with nothing behind their eyes, blank to block out the horrors they’ve seen. But something about actually seeing the chair used to wipe Bucky makes him want to join Peter in throwing up on the floor. He can feel the bile rising up in his throat, but he swallows it down. Shuri is rubbing Peter’s back, whispering to him, but it all sounds like static to Sam. There’s a roaring in his ears. 

It’s like the first time he went to Niagara Falls. He and Riley were home for a few days before shipping out for their first tour and on a whim, they drove up to Niagara because neither of them had been there. They bought tickets for a boat and made fun of each other for the ponchos they wore to protect their clothes from the mist. Sam still has the photos from the shitty disposable camera he had bought in a gift shop. They’re tucked in a shoebox in the back of his closet and he hasn’t looked at them since Riley fell. But Sam remembers the noise, the roar of the falls as they got closer. Objectively, Sam knew the falls would be loud, but he didn’t quite understand how loud until the little boat puttered as close as it could to the waterfall. It was deafening. He couldn’t hear Riley even though he was screaming at the top of his lungs. All he could hear was thousands of gallons of water falling over the rocks. 

It’s like that now. All he can hear is static and ringing and screams. 

“… recent energy surge,” Shuri is saying as the static clears. Peter is upright again, but his eyes are bloodshot and rimmed in red. His shoulders are curled in and he’s carefully avoiding looking at the chair. 

“Sorry, what?” Sam says, blinking and stepping back. Shuri is still talking a mile a minute, but nothing she’s saying is making sense and Sam realizes she’s rambling. And that he brought two sixteen-year-old kids on a dangerous and mentally taxing mission. 

How could he have been so  _ stupid _ ? If the Winter Soldier has been activated, Sam has just put two  _ children _ in danger. Peter, who’s lost so many people in such a short period of time, is now witness to the torture one of his best friends has endured. And Shuri, who Sam knows is also close to Bucky, is seeing it, too. Because reading about something and actually seeing the tools used to torture a person are two completely different things and these kids are not equipped to deal with that kind of emotional toll. 

“Go upstairs,” he says, cutting off Shuri, who is still rambling. “Both of you, upstairs.”

“But-” 

“No,” Sam says, voice hard. “Go. I’ll do recon on this room, you two finish up on the main and second floors. Bucky wouldn’t want you to see this.  _ I _ don’t want you to see this.” He takes a deep breath and feels like he’s breathing in fire; it burns. “As a matter of fact, go back to the Talon Flyer and wait for me. I shouldn’t have taken you guys with me on this. It’s too dangerous.”

“Sam,” Peter starts. 

“If you hear something, fly back to the compound. Leave me here; I can handle myself.” He keeps his eyes focused on the chair, refusing to meet Peter or Shuri’s eyes. “Go.”

He hears a quick whispered conversation, but then the two of them shuffle back up the stairs. Sam waits until he hears the door click closed before he allows himself a few moments to completely lose it. He takes in deep gulps of dry air, feeling his lungs push against his ribs. He focuses on that feeling, on the burn of taking in too much air at one time, on the tears pricking at the back of his eyes. And then he lets it all go. He lets out one last deep breath and relaxes. He has a job to do to save his best friend. 

The chair is the focal point of the room. It’s not an exact match to the one in the file SHIELD had on the Winter Soldier, but it's close enough that Sam figures there’s instructions in Zemo’s red book on how to make the chair and how to use it. There are even reinforced restraints on the left side to accomodate for Bucky’s arm. He steps up to the chair and places his hand on the headrest. The leather is cracked and stuffing is spilling out. He curls his hand around the headrest and listen to it crackle. The chair hums softly, power still feeding into it. Sam yanks his hand away like he’s been shocked. The control panel is to the right of the chair, and he stalks over there to find the kill switch. 

Pages from the notebook have been torn out and taped on the wall behind the panel. It’s all in Russian, so Sam pulls his goggles back over his eyes and gets the AI in his suit to start translating. One page outlines how many volts to use when wiping the mind. There’s a graph starting with erasing just the last day to everything the mind holds. A note in red ink warns the reader to only wipe the whole mind if the Soldier is completely out of control and if they have no further use for him. Sam yanks the page off the wall and only just resists crumpling it in his fist. Other pages give advice on how to subdue the Soldier and how to make a tranquilizer that he can’t resist. The formula for it matches what Bruce told Sam was in the sedative used on Bucky.

Sam takes down all the pages from the wall, keeping them in a neat stack. He wants to burn them all so no one can hurt Bucky like this again, but he doesn’t. He knows he needs them so they can track down Stonewall. He turns back to the panel to find the kill switch and instead finds a screen showing him his own back. He turns around and spots a security camera in the corner behind him. 

“Bingpot,” he says and sighs. Fucking Bucky and his sitcoms. 

He fiddles with the control panel until he finds the recordings from the last few days. He speeds through the first part when the room is empty and dormant, but stops when he sees Stonewall dragging an unconscious Bucky into the room. The timestamp is from twenty-seven hours earlier. Sam watches as Stonewall manhandles Bucky into the chair, securing his arms and legs and even his chest and head. Sam bares his teeth at the video and clenches his hand into a fist. He speeds through the time when Bucky is asleep because Stonewall left him alone in the dark basement. He resumes the normal playback speed when he sees Bucky start waking up. He fumbles with the controls until he gets the audio. 

Bucky pulls against the restraints and looks around frantically. Sam watches his jaw twitch and then watches him go completely still when Stonewall’s heavy footsteps descend the stairs. “The Winter Soldier,” Stonewall drawls. 

Bucky tenses. 

“You weren’t as hard to track down as I was expecting,” he continues, stepping closer. Bucky’s eyes track him, never wavering. “Getting this little notebook,” he holds up Zemo’s red book, “was harder to get than the world’s deadliest assassin.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” Bucky says evenly. 

Stonewall shrugs. “I hope you enjoyed your break while it lasted. I’ve been watching you, Soldier. This little life you’ve created for yourself… You’re unworthy of it.”

“No, I’m not.”

Stonewall waves the notebook around. “Have you read this?” 

“No,” Bucky grunts. 

“Then no wonder you believe you’re worthy of a happy ending. You’ve done some terrible things, Soldier. And I’m going to make you do one more.”

“You can’t make me do anything.” 

“Au contraire.”

His nostrils flare. 

“So do it. Say the words. Get it over with.”

Stonewall sets the book down on the control panel and walks over to Bucky, leaning close to his face. “Not yet. I want you to be completely cognizant when I tell you what you’re going to do for me.” He grabs Bucky’s hair and pulls it back, unnecessary with the band holding his head down, but clearly to show he’s in control. “You are going to kill Samuel Wilson.”

Sam feels the blood drain from his face. The same seems to happen to Bucky. 

“Why?”

“Because he killed my best friend.” 

…

Sam met Riley at basic training at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. He stepped off the bus at the base and glared up at the sun. Riley had stepped up next to him, shouldering his own duffle bag. “Fucking hot, isn’t it?”

“Hadn’t noticed,” Sam muttered. 

“Really? Your pit stains tell a different story.”

He turned to stare at him. 

He laughed. “Relax, I’m in the same boat as you. Doesn’t get this hot up in Ohio. At least not this dry heat bullshit.”

“Ohio?”

“Midwest born and raised, or couldn’t you tell? I’m Riley.”

“Sam.” They shook sweaty hands. 

“Well, Sam, I think friends go a long way down here.”

“Man, who said I wanted to be your friend?”

“You’re still talking to me, aren’t you?”

Sam rolled his eyes and started walking towards the nearest building. “I’m not making friendship bracelets.”

Riley beamed. “Can I at least paint your nails?”

…

Sam just barely restrains himself from destroying the whole basement. He can’t finish watching the video, not by himself, at least, so he backs everything up on a hard drive and then wipes the memory on the computer. He has the AI in his suit take a scan of the basement so he can walk through it more in depth with Bruce, Fury, and Maria. Nothing stops him from lighting the chair on fire, though. He watches the flames lick up the leather with disinterest. When the flames start to die out and the metal skeleton is glowing red with heat, he turns on his heels and leaves the basement, feet pounding heavily on the wooden stairs. 

The house sits empty in the middle of the east coast woods, neither Bucky nor Stonewall anywhere in sight. Anger radiates through Sam in a way it hasn’t since he lost Riley. He works his jaw as he walks back to the Talon Flyer, twigs crunching under his heavy feet. Peter and Shuri cut off their whispered conversation when he walks onto the Flyer and nobody says a word during the flight back to New York. 

…

When they land on the compound, Steve is waiting for them. He hobbles across the grass as the ramp comes down “Sam,” he says, voice cracking. 

Sam shakes his head. “He wasn’t there, but he was at some point.” 

“Do you have any-”

“If I did, you’d be the first to know,” Sam interrupts. “Everyone inside?”

“Bruce, Maria, and Nick, yes,” Steve says, following Sam, Peter, and Shuri inside. “How’re you guys?” he says and Sam recognizes the desperate attempt to lighten the dark mood. 

Shuri mumbles, “Not great.”

“Been better,” Peter says softly. Sam’s heart aches. He knows how close Bucky and Peter have gotten since everyone came back. He knows Peter blames himself for not getting to Bucky’s apartment sooner. And Sam also knows that nothing he says will relieve the kid’s guilt. As much as the kid annoys Sam sometimes, he cares about him. Peter has lost more in his short life than anybody else Sam can think of, with the exception of Wanda. Sam glances back at Peter, takes in the way his jaw is clenched, shifted slightly to the right, and his eyes are watery. And Sam is angry all over again. How dare Stonewall do this to Peter? To Sam, fine; Sam has done some shit worthy of being hurt like this, but Peter? Never. And Bucky doesn’t deserve it either. If Stonewall’s real target is really Sam, why can’t he just kill him himself?

He bursts into the kitchen where everyone is sitting and announces, “Stonewall wants to use Bucky to kill me.”

Whatever conversation had been going on stops when he says that. Maria is the first to ask the million dollar question: “Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard the name Montgomery Stonewall before now.” Sam sits down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and lays his head on the table. He hears other chairs scraping and creaking as Peter, Shuri, and Steve settle in around him. 

“What’d you find?” Fury asks.

Sam slides the flash drive over to him. “Everything is on there.” 

Peter slides one over as well. “I didn’t find much in Stonewall’s office. Just some assignments from classes and a Purple Heart, most likely for his friend.”

“What friend?” Shuri asks. 

“Does it matter?” Bruce says. 

“Jeffery Oliver.”

Sam sits up straighter. “Who?”

“Jeffery Oliver?” Peter repeats, more like a question this time.

“I know that name,” Sam says. 

“How?” Steve asks, but Sam is already standing up and booking it out of the kitchen. He’s already mostly undressed in the locker room when Steve comes in. 

“Sam.” 

He looks up and gives Steve a cursory glance. “Steve.”

“How do you know Jeffery Oliver?”

“That’s my business,” he retorts and he knows he’s being difficult but he can’t help it. He’s tired and he’s angry and it seems like everything he does gets them farther away from finding Bucky. 

“If you know something that can help us find Bucky-”

“And why the fuck do you care?” Sam snaps, the anger from the last few months finally boiling over. 

Steve looks taken aback. “He’s my best friend. You’re both my best friends.”

“Yeah? Then why’d you leave?” 

“I’m right here.”

Sam glares icily at him. “You know what I mean.” 

“I thought you weren’t mad,” Steve says slowly and Sam is so fucking  _ tired _ of Steve and his stupid fucking levelheadedness. 

“Of course I’m fucking mad, Steve! Why the fuck wouldn’t I be? I thought, that after everything we had been though, after everything  _ you _ did to bring me and Bucky and everyone else back after five goddamn years, that you wouldn’t fuck off back to the fifties! If those five years were  _ so  _ damn hard without us how were you able to leave and not see us or interact with us for almost seventy-five years? How the fuck does that make sense? You say one thing and mean something else. And I’m tired of you acting like you made the best choice for yourself. Yes, you earned a fucking break, but a break is going off to an island for some peace and quiet, not going back to the goddamn 1950s and leaving everyone else in shambles. So yes, I am still mad and I will continue to be mad until you give me a good reason not to be.” 

“I was happy with Peggy.”

“But not with us.”

“No, that’s not-”

“Peggy was happy without you, Steve.”

“I wasn’t without her.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo! I’m not happy without Riley but you won’t catch me going back in time to stop us from going up in the air that day.”

“But Riley was just your friend,” Steve says. 

Sam grabs Steve by the throat and pushes him up against the wall. “You’re stupider than I thought if you think Riley was just a friend and you’re more inconsiderate than I thought if you believe it doesn’t hurt just as much to lose your best friend. That, or you really didn’t love Bucky as much as he thought.” He releases Steve and watches him slide to the ground. Steve’s stronger than most men, still, but it knocks the wind out of him nonetheless. He sputters a little bit before standing up. 

“I don’t have to defend my decisions to you,” he coughs out, voice rough. 

“You’re right, you don’t. I don’t give a shit anymore. But Bucky still does. So when I find him, and  _ I _ will find him, no thanks to you, you are going to have to look him in the eye and explain to him that losing Peggy, a girl you knew for a few months during the war, hurt more than losing Bucky, your best friend for god knows how many years. And I pity the friendship you will lose with him because of it.” When Sam stalks out of the locker room, he finds Peter huddled outside the door. 

“Sorry,” Peter whispers. 

“For what?”

“Spying. I just- I heard yelling and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

Sam loops his arm around Peter’s neck and hugs him close. “It’s okay, Pete. Everything’s okay.” He blinks and feels a single tear roll down his cheek. He blinks again but nothing can stop the shuddering sob that rips out of him. 

…

Sam blinked. “What?”

The colonel looked at him. Sam couldn’t remember his name, but he knew he was important. “You have been selected to participate in a top secret program. Upon agreeing, all the information will be given to you.”

“Can I at least know where I’ll be stationed if I agree?”

“No.”

“Am I the only one chosen for the program?”

“I can’t tell you that.” 

“So you’re asking me to agree to be a part of a program you can tell me nothing about?”

The colonel nodded. 

Sam knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime, something he could not give up, but his mind kept wandering to Riley. They’d only known each other for almost eight weeks, but the two of them had gotten so close. He couldn’t imagine leaving Riley behind. They had been trying to swing it so they could go to the same tech school and maybe the same base once they graduated. They knew the chances were incredibly slim, but the two of them couldn’t help but hope. Sam knew that agreeing to this job meant possibly never seeing Riley again. 

“Would- Would I be able to see my family and friends?” he asked. 

“I can’t guarantee that.” 

Sam thought of his mom and dad, his younger sisters. His friends from college. And he thought of being a pencil pusher at an Air Force base. Sitting behind a desk or doing something he didn’t choose himself but was just assigned. And he thought of Riley, again. And how angry Riley would be if Sam turned this down. How devastated he’d be if he never got to see Sam again. 

He took a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”

The colonel nodded and slid a manila folder across the desk to Sam titled ‘EXO-FALCON’. 


End file.
